Lichtwärts¹ is an experimental Quake III level built using the art cel shading effects described at shaderlab.com. Its design is stunning, but is hard to get to grips with, featuring a tight, intricate layout and initially disorienting visuals.

Several other levels have been made in the same style since, including a Quake Live training level, SPZ_TRAIN1, which builds on and improves the progress made here, making great use of transparencies, curved surfaces and intelligent visual cues.

Once you've become accustomed to the level you can have some great battles here, but the Q3A bots struggle to survive, so you'll have to do so against networked opponents. Even on the very highest of skills the bots will lose almost as many frags as they gain falling off the edges of the level, as author Dominic Szablewski describes in his design notes:

“Lichtwärts (lightwards; in light direction) was not built as a really playable map but as a design study.”

“When I've tested the Cel-Shader effect, which was now possible (thanks to ydnar), it blew me away - so I decided to make a map with it. The map is highly inspired by some screenshots from ydnar demonstrating the effect and charon's geocomp map.”

“As you may guess, the bots play pretty stupid in this map (as if they won't always do). it was a pain in the ass to get them even running. The r_speeds are at 20k (doubled by the Cel-Shader) so you may need a fast computer to play this map.”

As mentioned above, the level can be a little confusing at first, the newly styled teleporters, jump pads and other standard features are not obvious in their design and the layout is unforgiving and has a strange flow, but as its author states, the map's first priority was to experiment with design.

All of the goods are on the lowest levels of the arena, the megahealth, railgun, red armour jacket and pairs of rocket launchers and lightning guns sit a matter of feet away from each other. The higher levels on the other hand contain lower powered items and arms like the grenade launcher, which is unsuitable in space maps for all but the most precise marksmen, but Lichtwärts is worth the download just to see what the Quake III engine is capable of with the right designers behind it.

There are no secrets in this level.